It isn’t difficult to see the real-world parallels of Phil Johnston’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits. Credenza (Margo Martindale) and Jim (Johnny Vegas) are proud grifters. They persistently rail against government regulations. They knowingly offer outlandish claims of financial salvation in a time of great economic strife. They disregard evidence of environmental degradation for want of a couple bucks. At one point in Johnston’s blisteringly funny animated tale, the two run for office with the promise to make Triperot City fun again. The corrupt Mayor Wayne John John-John (Jason Mantzoukas) only offers “thoughts and prayers” when the town is overrun by a leak of neon-green, radioactive, liquid H๏τ dog meat.
Perhaps this doesn’t sound exactly like a kid’s film, but then again, the whole film is a story within a story, demanded by a small bug inside Jim’s beard, who tells his mother, Pippa (Emilia Clarke), he wants more complex stories with “high-brow themes and low-brow humor.” That’s exactly what Johnston delivers.
While the film may thematically point to real-world struggles in the United States, The Twits is mostly an accessible story about the power of empathy in the face of naked evil, all to the tune of about a thousand fart jokes. On the mayoral candidate debate stage, the Twits claim that their open thievery has been done for the benefit of the citizens, and then they (literally) make Mayor John-John’s ʙuтт explode with a poisoned cake. High-brow themes, low-brow humor indeed.
The Twits Balances High-Brow Themes With Low-Brow Humor
The hero of this utterly chaotic tale is Beesha Balti (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a 12-year-old orphan whose naive belief in her birth parents’ return is only equaled by her admirable belief that powerful people can be brought to heel. Her best friend at the orphanage, Busby Mulch (Ryan Anderson Lopez), is on the verge of being adopted, but before he goes, Beesha promises to bring him to Twitlandia, the bizarre junkyard of a theme park the Twits have advertised on television.
Twitlandia is the one thing on earth Credenza and Jim truly love. Well, that and pranks. Through one of Talking Heads’ David Byrne and Hayley Williams’ original songs, the Twits are revealed as romantics of the truly debauched, considering themselves free pioneers whose life on the margins is a direct challenge to normative society. The park looks enticing from afar, but the rides include a Tilt-A-Pottie, with port-a-potties as pᴀssenger cabins, and a Bounce Pit with bug-infested, used mattresses inside a literal pit.
But, before they can make it to enjoy the rollercoasters, the property is condemned by the city for “being dangerous, being structurally unsound, and stinking of rancid H๏τ dog meat.” In retaliation against the city, Credenza and Jim Twit steal the liquid H๏τ dog truck and explode its contents onto the streets, an act which has the domino effect of preventing Busby from getting adopted. When he and Beesha go on the hunt for the culprits, they discover the Twits’ home, which looks like an animated cousin of the house from The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre, and a cage full of magical animals called the Muggle-Wumps.
Because they are empathetic children, they find they have the ability to understand the Muggle-Wumps. The matriarch, Mary (Natalie Portman), tells them that they have been forcibly put here, perpetually hung upside down so that their tears can be extracted to help power the park. Though Beesha is successful in getting the Twits arrested for their theft of the H๏τ dog water, the highly-publicized capture has the inadvertent effect of celebrating the Twits, who claim that the opening of their park would reinstate Triperot as the “fun capital of the world,” as it once was known. Rapid climate change has sucked the lake dry, destroying both the tourism industry and their collective sense of joy.
Thus begins something like a prank war between the Twits and the orphanage which now protects the Muggle-Wumps. Helmed by the exaggeratedly midwestern-nice Mr. Napkin (Johnston), the latter digs deep to fight against this incursion, even as the Twits leverage their new legion of followers to fight against the children.
The Twits is probably a bit overlong, especially in the back half when the film gets bogged down in a game of тιт-for-tat. It can be a bit exhausting being thrust into the relentlessly gross POV of the villains, but then again, the voice acting across the board is remarkably expressive.
The animation is a pretty big departure from Johnston’s last directorial effort, Ralph Breaks the Internet, more closely resembling the tactility of the Aardman’s, with distinct, bombastic character design. Much of the humor here is absurd and laugh out-loud funny. It may be the best children’s horror film, if it can be called that, since Monster House, especially for how much it trusts its audience.
In the end, it briefly seems like Johnston and screenwriter Meg Favreau are going for a hope-core ending where empathy defeats all, but The Twits is ultimately much smarter than that. “Hate is easy,” Mary warns Beesha. If those that oppose you won’t change their ways, then the real challenge to idealism is not letting them change you in turn. That, and sometimes a good fart joke can be the peak of comedy.
